The Victory of the Counter-Revolution in Vienna

by Karl Marx

Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 136

Translated by the Marx-Engels Institute

Transcribed for the Internet by director@marx.org,
1994

Cologne, November 6. Croatian freedom and order has won the
day, and this victory was celebrated with arson, rape, looting and other
atrocities. Vienna is in the hands of Windischgratz, Jellachich and Auersperg.
Hecatombs of victims are sacrificed on the grave of the aged traitor Latour.

The gloomy forecasts of our Vienna correspondent [Muller-Tellering.
See Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 127, October 27, 1848. -- Ed.] have come
true, and by now he himself may have become a victim of the butchery.

For a while we hoped Vienna could be liberated by Hungarian reinforcements,
and we are still in the dark regarding the movements of the Hungarian army.

Treachery of every kind prepared the way for Vienna's fall. The
entire performance of the Imperial Diet and the town council since October
6 is a tale of continuous treachery. Who are the people represented in
the Imperial Diet and the town council?

The bourgeoisie.

A part of the Viennese National Guard openly sided with the camarilla
from the very beginning of the October revolution. Towards the end of the
October revolution another part of the National Guard in collusion with
the imperial bandits fought against the proletariat and the Academic Legion.
To which strata do these groups of the National Guard belong?

To the bourgeoisie.

The bourgeoisie in France, however, headed the counterrevolution
only after it had broken down all obstacles to the rule of its own class.
The bourgeoisie in Germany meekly joins the retinue of the absolute monarchy
and of feudalism before securing even the first conditions of existence
necessary for its own civic freedom and its rule. In France it played the
part of a tyrant and made its own counter-revolution. In Germany it acts
like a slave and carries out the counter-revolution for its own tyrants.
The bourgeoisie in France won its victory in order to humble the people.
In Germany it humbled itself to prevent the victory of the people. History
presents no example of greater wretchedness than that of the German bourgeoisie.

Who fled from Vienna in large numbers leaving their wealth to
be watched over by the magnanimous people, the people whom, in reward for
their watchman's duties, they maligned While away and whose massacre they
witnessed on their return?

The bourgeoisie.

Whose innermost secrets were revealed by the thermometer which
dropped whenever the people of Vienna showed signs of life, and rose whenever
the people were in the throes of death? Who used the runic script of the
stock exchange quotations?

The bourgeoisie.

The "German National Assembly" and its "central authority" have
betrayed Vienna. Whom do they represent?

Mainly the bourgeoisie.

The victory of "Croatian order and freedom" at Vienna depended
on the victory of the "genteel" republic in Paris. Who won the day in June?

The bourgeoisie.

European counter-revolution began its debaucheries with its victory
in Paris.

In February and March armed force was beaten everywhere. Why?
Because it represented only the government. After June it was everywhere
victorious because the bourgeoisie everywhere had come to a secret understanding
with it, while retaining official leadership of the revolutionary movement
and introducing all those half measures which by the very nature of things
were bound to miscarry.

The national fanaticism of the Czechs was the most powerful instrument
the Viennese camarilla possessed. The allies are already at loggerheads.
In this issue our readers will find the protest of the Prague delegation
against the insolent rudeness with which it was greeted in Olmutz.

This is the first symptom of the struggle which is going to break
out between the Slav party and its hero Jellachich on the one hand, and
the party of the plain camarilla, which stands above all nationality, and
its hero Windischgratz on the other. Moreover the German peasants in Austria
are not yet pacified. Their voice will be loudly heard above the caterwauling
of the Austrian nationalities. And from a third quarter the voice of the
Tsar, the friend of the people, reaches as far as Pest; his henchmen are
waiting for the word of command in the Danubian principalities.

Finally, the last decision of the German National Assembly at
Frankfurt, which incorporates German Austria into the German empire, should
lead to a gigantic conflict, unless the German central authority and the
German National Assembly see it as their task to enter the arena in order
to be hissed off the boards by European public. For all their pious resignation
the struggle in Austria will assume gigantic dimensions such as world history
has never yet witnessed.

The second act of the drama has just been performed in Vienna,
its first act having been staged in Paris under the title of The June Days.
In Paris the Guarde mobile, in Vienna "Croats" -- in both cases lazzaroni,
lumpenproletariat hired and armed -- were used against the working and
thinking proletarians. We shall soon see the third act performed in Berlin.

Assuming that arms will enable the counter-revolution to establish
itself in the whole of Europe, money would then kill it in the whole of
Europe. European bankruptcy, national bankruptcy would be the fate nullifying
the victory. Bayonets crumble like tinder when they come into contact with
the salient "economic" facts.

But developments will not wait for the bills of exchange drawn
by the European states on European society to expire. The crushing counter-blow
of the June revolution will be struck in Paris. With the victory of the
"red republic" in Paris, armies will be rushed from the interior of their
countries to the frontiers and across them, and the real strength of the
fighting parties will become evident. We shall then remember this June
and this October and we too shall exclaim:

Vae victis!

The purposeless massacres perpetrated since the June and October
events, the tedious offering of sacrifices since February and March, the
very cannibalism of the counterrevolution will convince the nations that
there is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society
and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified
and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror.